Dearborn

The show, which followed five Muslims families in Dearborn, will not be picked up for a second season, a TLC executive confirmed.

"I’m certainly sad to hear the show wasn’t being renewed," says Suehalia Amen, one of the women featured on the reality show.

She says "All-American Muslim" sought to humanize Muslims in a way mainstream media hadn’t done before…and it made viewers look at Muslims and Arab-Americans in a new light:

"It’s been an eye-opening experience," explains Amen. "To have people tell you 'I hated Muslims, and after your show I’m able to understand your community and have a new-found respect.'"

The show’s creator, Mike Mosallam, agrees. He says the show's ratings dropped throughout the season, but he says that doesn’t mean the show didn’t succeed on a cultural level in terms of "what it taught people and what it dispelled in terms of people’s perceptions. I mean those are things that no ratings will ever be able to show."

The Arab American National Museum wants to become more than “a building filled with stuff.” That’s why it’s recording the stories of everyday people as part of an on-going project.

The museum just released three interviews it did in conjunction with Storycorps, about profiling and stereotyping after 9-11. The interviews are posted on the website arabstereotypes.org. But the museum regularly posts other recordings and podcasts on i-tunes & YouTube.

Matthew Stiffler is a researcher at the museum. He says one way to counter Islamaphobia is when people who don’t know Arab Americans or Muslim Americans listen to these recordings. “Listening to stories and having these personal connections is the best way to overcome this sort of bias and bigotry that is rampant right now.”

This summer the museum plans to record Arab American kids talking about how the Arab Spring has affected their lives and their ideas about democracy.

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) - The city of Dearborn has paid $100,000 in legal fees to attorneys for a Christian evangelist whose free-speech rights were violated at a popular Arab-American street festival.

Dearborn has a large Muslim population and one of the nation's biggest concentrations of people with roots in the Arab world. (Photo above of the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the U.S. by Flickr user ruffin_ready.)

City police in 2010 barred George Saieg and his allies from freely walking sidewalks with literature to convert Muslims to Christianity. Chief Ron Haddad says he was just controlling foot traffic, but a federal appeals court says the city violated the First Amendment.

The court says allowing the evangelists on the festival's perimeter wasn't good enough.

As the prevailing party, Saieg was entitled to legal fees and other costs from Dearborn. His lawyers say the money was paid last week.

A network of Arab-American nonprofits say they will no longer accept donations from Lowe's.

The home improvement chain has gotten tons of mediaattention since it pulled its ads from TLC's All-American Muslim, saying the show was a "lightning rod" for controversy. The retailer was also the recipient of the conservative Florida Family Association's campaign to get the ads pulled.

Now 22 Arab-American nonprofits have refused to accept any future donations from Lowe's.

Hassan Jaber is with ACCESS, a nonprofit based in Dearborn. He says for the past five years the Lowe's in Allen Park donated shovels, paint, tools, and all other kinds of supplies to ACCESS. The items went to support the nonprofit's home renovation program in some of Detroit’s poorest neighborhoods.

"Together we gave hope to the community," says Jaber. But he goes on to say that the decision by Lowe's at the corporate level is "a complete contradiction of their local mission here."

Jaber says they will no longer accept those supplies. He adds they considered the Lowe's in Allen Park a "friend and partner," but he says ACCESS "made it clear that we stand by our principal."

A Judge has reversed a Dearborn jury’s ruling that found a Christian pastor intended to breach the peace at a demonstration he planned outside the country’s biggest mosque.

Terry Jones is the controversial Florida Pastor who once burned the Quran, and believes Muslim Sharia law is a major threat to the U.S.

He wanted to protest outside Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America in April, but never got the chance. He was hauled to court, found guilty of intent to breach the peace, and ordered to stay away from the Islamic Center of America for three years.

Jones appealed his prosecution, saying it violated his right to free speech. A Wayne county Circuit Court Judge ruled it actually did not. But he still reversed the jury’s decision on a due process technicality.

Jones said he plans to return to the mosque to protest “jihad and sharia.”

“That was why we chose that particular location," Jones told reporters after the ruling. "That particular location had a definite purpose. Because we were targeting [those] two aspects of radical Islam.”

The Judge also overturned a three-year injunction keeping Jones away from the mosque.

Wayne County Prosecutors say they’ll appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

A Dearborn soccer field was the site of a traditional Muslim prayer service Friday.

But it was more than that—an effort to show visible solidarity with protesters in Yemen, who have spent nine months in mass demonstrations against the 34-year regime of President President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Like the recent pro-democracy movements in other Arab countries, the protests in Yemen have been fueled by youth frustrations.

Controversial Florida Pastor Terry Jones is coming back to Michigan this week. Terry Jones gained fame for burning a copy of the Qur’an as a protest against what he calls ‘radical’ Islam. His attempt to hold a protest in Dearborn landed him in jail briefly this Spring. He’s due back in a Dearborn courtroom on Thursday.

Before then on Wednesday, Jones plans to take part in a rally at the state capital, which he says will focus on America’s moral decay and the rise of radical Islam.

As the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks approaches, a group of Arab American middle school students spent the past year documenting their lives and their community. Their stories are part of a new exhibit at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

Controversial Florida pastor Terry Jones returns to southeast Michigan Thursday. Jones tried to hold a rally outside a Dearborn mosque last week to protest radical Islam. But he ended up spending time in the city jail for defying a court order.

A controversial Florida pastor who planned to protest outside a Dearborn mosque Friday instead spent the day in court, and briefly went to jail.

Terry Jones last month burned a Quran in Florida, sparking deadly riots in Afghanistan. That prompted a jury to decide that his protest against Islam could lead to violence in Dearborn.

Jones refused to pay a symbolic $1 peace bond, leading to his arrest.

Susan Morgan of Dearborn attended an interfaith rally in a cold, hard rain outside the Henry Ford Centennial Library Friday afternoon, as the trial continued in the courthouse nearby.

“We’d really like our tax money to be spent someplace better, and not wasted on this," Morgan says. "This has been going on for three or four weeks for us here in Dearborn.”

Some participants in the rally said although they disagreed with Joneses’ message, they supported his right to free speech, including Ghada Saleh. She's originally from Lebanon, but has lived in Dearborn for 37 years.

“He has the right to express his opinion about whatever he wants," Saleh says. "But what he stands for is totally wrong. As a Christian person, he should know that burning the Quran is an insult to Jesus.”

Jones has been ordered to stay away from the mosque and adjacent property for three years.

A six person jury decided just after 6:30pm that Pastor Terry Jones should post a 'peace bond' if he planned to go ahead with an anti-Islamic rally outside a Dearborn mosque. Jones refused to pay the one dollar bond required. Then Judge Mark Somer had the controversial Florida minister arrested and placed in jail.

Michigan Radio's Rina Miller is at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn and phoned in the above reports.

On their live blog, the Free Press reports that "several hundred people have gathered outside the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn for a Terry Jones counterrally, listening to speakers who have pleaded for peace and understanding.

Crowd members are carrying signs that say, 'We are Peace,' 'We Are Islam," and 'Hope, not Hurt.'"

Update: 4:32 p.m.

The Detroit Free Press reports that members of assorted police departments have gathered at the site of the planned counter-protest outside of the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn. The Freep reports they have riot gear "on hand visible inside several vans, including helmets and sticks."

From the Freep:

Emergency crews from more than a half-dozen agencies are gathered outside the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn.

They are on guard for a scheduled 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. counter-rally organized by Detroit-area religious leaders in response to a Florida pastor’s desire to hold his own rally outside Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America, one of the nation’s largest mosques.

2:40 p.m.

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who organized a Quran burning last month, plans to hold his anti-Muslim rally tonight at 5 p.m. at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn regardless of the outcome of this afternoon's trial.

He said during the trial that he knows of 5 people from his church who will be there.

Prosecutors say more than 10,000 people could show up to counter protest his rally and they fear violence could erupt.

They liken Jones' intent to hold an anti-Muslim rally outside one of the largest mosques in the United States to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

A counter-rally has been planned at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn 3 miles away from the mosque.

It's scheduled to start at 4 p.m.

Michigan Radio's Rina Miller will attend the rallies and file updates for us.

Judge Mark Somers gave the jury instructions on how to evaluate the prosecutor's case against Terry Jones. The trial will decide whether Jones is allowed to hold an anti-Muslim rally outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

The jurors are to evaluate whether Jones is likely to breach the peace or not.

The jury's decision must be unanimous.

Update 11:52 a.m.

The trial is on recess. The parties and the jury are to return at 1 p.m.

A trial opening Friday morning will decide if a controversial Florida pastor will be allowed to hold an anti-Islamic rally outside a Dearborn mosque later in the day. The pastor complains the trial itself is an attempt to deny him his constitutional rights.

Pastor Terry Jones insists he won’t burn a copy of the Qur’an as he has done in the past during his planned rally outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Still, Wayne County officials worry his protest may spark violence. The city of Dearborn denied his permit request.

A controversial Florida pastor says he will lead a rally against radical Islam outside a Dearborn mosque this Friday, despite pleas for him to cancel or move his event to another location. Late Wednesday, the city of Dearborn denied the pastor's permit to protest in front of the Islamic Center of America, meaning he could be arrested if he goes through with his plans for a rally.